i have written a story and have tried to use the editors list here. of all the editors i emailed only one answered me. now i have tried to submit a story and each time i have checked it its listed as pending. its been almost a week! is that normal?

At the moment it apparently is. A few others have reported experiencing the same time lag. We in the middle of a contest, and those stories get zipped to the front of the posting line. Also, the Thanksgiving holidays in the States apparently got everything slowed down. Give it a few more days and then if it still hasn't posted, you could PM Laurel directly (mail system at the top right of this page). Don't e-mail, as they don't get delivered and don't mess with the buttons on the story submission, or it might be sent back to the end of the queue.